Evo 2009

live broadcast just started...
http://evo2k.com/live/

yup, think daigo is the only confirmed japanese. mago (no.1 japanese sagat) has no passport, nuki (st/sf4 player) is too poor, kuni might be there, no iyo (japanese national champ) or shiro (his teammate and a member if jpn's power 10) or nemo (daigo's pal).

justin wong is just back from three weeks in japan where he got knocked out in the first round of a tokyo TRF sfiv compy by the third best jpn bison; marn (his sidekick was there) got bodied by mago in the first round. wong beat akimo (top jpn honda) and fuudo (great jpn ryu) in casuals and the jpnese said nothing but good things about him. in an interview, justin's said tht he is unbeatable at evo, except by daigo, because he was already better than all of the us but he's now learned so much from his time in jpn

I think wong'll take it (has a year's experience + his jpn training + his natural talent + he's won most if not all the sfiv tourneys he has entered in the us and europe)

nice tht they have seth k*ll*an commentating tho. beats the idiots who commentated devastation

the open & evo = my weekend plans :)

Not shocked that the stream and SRK have crashed, but :(

so I cd go into more detail abt the lead up, odds and rivalries around this evo but thk it might only be me and you jeff that's reading

Will SBO have a live stream?

I'm reading...

I'm still not used to the idea that there can be commentators on SF matches that actually sound like they know what they're talking about, it's great.

oy they are stupidly forgetting to go back to the screen action, right now they're just showing the announcers instead the match

i'm gonna take back what i said about the commentators

also matches are pretty aggressive and intense for these early brackets

Some of the commentary I've heard has been great / some is horrible unfunny bullshitting (all better than Devastation though)

Glad they're showing some HDR today. Seeing it back to back with IV, really reminds me how much I prefer the faster, more aggressive gameplay of HDR. Better commentary too. Weird to see Daigo lose (and playing Guile). Apparently he'd never played HDR before?

Shoot! Hope that's up on YouTube soon.

might be in here somewhere. I'm watching it now so I'll post up the time if it is in this recording

daigo made it out of the loser's pools tho I heard, despite never having played HDR before

I just hope daigo doesn't meet up w/some wacky console-char expert somewhere along the line in SFIV and gets peaced out due to lack of experience. I want to see him wreck americans ,,|,

skip to 1:03:50 on the stream I linked to see daigo

Daigo wisely switches back to Ryu for HDR

oop - eliminated by a Balrog!

...and promptly gets peaced out by graham wolfe's rog :)

jason cole out now too, beaten by 08er thelo the great

I really like seth k*ll*an's commentary here, he's knowledgeable without being too dry

My only complaint is that they're not really doing any kind of job of explaining the bracket system and the progress they're making thru it, which is making the matches seem more random than they must be. It's probably difficult because of how fast things are going (and how much is going on), but it is also taking away a little of the drama, because it's making it seem more confusing than it probably is too.

I almost thought that that Chun had Daigo's number there! I have to think not playing on a cab is not beneficial for Daigo here : /

Also jet leg

dan is brilliant

Watched that first Daigo match - wow, did he really come to this never having played HD Remix? Definitely looked like it! I wasn't home most of the day, any other good matches (and links to them)?

the other japanese (top 40 jpn bp player, 90k bp) is really good, my MVP so far

daigo still looking about 70%, some v.uncharacteristic execution errors which I imagine are because he's using a borrowed stick and sitting on the floor (when he usu. plays on cabs)

I don't know if they'll have cabs for finals day today? I've seen them play on them before at evo

Nice to see afrolegends win out with Balrog in HDR. I don't think he bothered using TAP at all?!? Really good matches from everybody in the final 8 though.

Daigo the inevitable

My internet decided to cut out at the last minute, so I missed a couple of the final matches, but I did catch the last few rounds between Wong and Daigo... intense. Seemed like Wong could almost pull it off, but he just didn't make it. Did you see that crazy match where that guy utterly dominated with Cammy? I think he was fighting Sanford, the MvC 2 winner.

Oh wait, Sanford was the Cammy, I got mixed up.

sanford dominated dan from japan because dan has probably never fought a half decent cammy before because she's not in the arcade

I'm glad sanford got knocked out before he was able to cheap out daigo with another of the crappy console chars

daigo vs justin was so good and justin was so clutch, his balrog's footsies were intense. I wd have been happy for either daigo or justin to win. daigo just so amazing, he even had new shit (walk up close whiff throw > shoryuken whuuuuuuuut?) right at the last minute

super sick all round evo, marquee match after marquee match and the goodies won in the end :D

LOL, I would've loved to see that (re: sanford and console chars). Aside from Wong's picks and that match where vvv scrub tried to counter-pick Sanford's Akuma with Honda the character selection was pretty boring in the top 8 (though surprisingly only 1 Zangief match and zero Sagats!). It felt way more promising on Day 1 when I was seeing more Sims, Guiles and so on. That said, I was pretty damn captivated by the matches this weekend nonetheless.

I gotta admit, even though when it comes down to it, he failed - I loved Wong's shameless wrestling-style pandering to the crowd.

perez is no scrub! his balrog was legit and he was linking into honda's HHS as if it was no thing. tht's tricky! the most stupid counter-pick was ed ma trying to cp justin's rufus w/zangief. everybody and his dog thks zangief is ruf's hardest match but j.wong (who has funny match-up ideas) thinks ruf dominates gief, so I'm sure he was confident. never saw ed ma play gief in my life.

no sagats because american sagats are shit. if rf, bonchan or mago or any of the top 10 bp jpn sagats had come they'd've walked it imo... tho daigo beat mago 20-10 in a recent set so iunno

wong was awesome, I agree, when he got up mid-match to hype the crowd it ws too good :D

I don't know - I wonder if some of that over-emotionalism hurt him. It's easy to get caught up in the moment like that and to expend your energy in the wrong way. I more admire people who are able to keep their cool and act like they expected to win - to act classy (maybe just because that's always seemed harder to me).

cozwn i wasn't calling him a scrub, that was his actual handle (vvv scrub), weirdly enough. And damn I know how hard that Honda slap link is, I was like 0_0 every time he did that! I was pretty impressed with that match, even though he lost.

Jeff, you're probably right about Wong wasting energy like that, especially when he was getting up in the middle of a set. But damn it man, he had heart. And showsmanship! That's American! To be the man, you've got to beat the man (which he did not). WOO!

I totally respect Daigo, he is incredibly good and completely on a higher level (than everyone) as a player both in skills and mental strength and abilities (his mindgaming and change-ups in the last several sets as he got used to Wong's Balrog were pretty interesting). But he kind of has the talent of Michael Jordan and the personality of Tim Duncan, if you know what I'm sayin'...